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Three Essays on Agricultural Development and Environmental Economics in China

Lai, Wangyang
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1497433335706255

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Agricultural, Environmental and Developmental Economics.
China’s agriculture is crucial to its internal economic development and has significant global impacts. The choices concerning land, labor, technology, fertilizer and pesticide fundamentally influence agricultural productivity. With only 9% of the global sown area, China successfully feeds 20% of the world’s population. However, this achievement is accompanied with serious environmental challenges. For example, the strong growth in agricultural chemical use and increasing popularity of crop straw burning have caused considerable agricultural pollution including water contamination, soil erosion and air quality decline. In order to enhance farm productivity and promote sustainable development, it is critical to understand the interactions between agricultural inputs and agricultural productivity as well as the impacts of agricultural production on environmental quality and human health. In the first chapter, I investigate the effect of land fragmentation on machinery use as well as the effect of machinery use on crop production. The data come from a farm survey in Hebei and Shandong provinces in 2008. Endogeneity is addressed by utilizing land fragmentation due to previous long-term land assignment as an instrument and first difference estimation between normalized wheat and corn output from the same plots in the same year. The main results indicate that consolidating an average farm of 0.31 hectares from 2.28 plots to one plot increases machinery use by about 10%. Further, a 10% increase of machinery use increases crop production between 0.5% and 1%. The second chapter provides new evidence that pesticides adversely affect health outcomes via drinking water exposure. This study follows a difference-in-difference-in-differences framework to compare health outcomes between people who drink surface water and ground water in regions with different intensities of rice pesticide use before and after 2004, when China shifted from taxing agriculture to subsidizing agricultural programs. The data come from several Chinese statistical yearbooks (1998-2011) and the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (1998-2011). The results indicate that a 10% increase in rice pesticide use unfavorably alters a key medical disability index (Activities of Daily Living) by 1% for rural residents 65 and older. This is equivalent to 2.13 and 0.64 million dollars in medical and family care costs, respectively (in total, 0.024% of rice production profits). In the third chapter, I estimate the effects of air pollution from agricultural straw burning on the cognitive function of adjacent populations in China. The data link fire points measured via remote sensing with the China Health and Nutrition Survey at the week-of-interview-by-county level from 1997 to 2006. I follow a difference-in-differences approach that compares scores in cognition tests in counties with high versus low frequencies of fire points during the autumn harvest period versus other time periods. I find that respondents (aged 55 and above) in counties with high frequencies of fire points have scores that are 0.044 lower (-5.1%) in a general cognition test, and recall 0.474 fewer objects (-11.8%) in delayed memory tests. I also find that the results are largely driven by the cohort aged 65 and above as well as rural residents.
Brian Roe (Advisor)
Abdoul Sam (Committee Member)
Joyce Chen (Committee Member)
146 p.
Agricultural Economics; Environmental Economics

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Citations

  • Lai, W. (2017). Three Essays on Agricultural Development and Environmental Economics in China [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1497433335706255

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Lai, Wangyang. Three Essays on Agricultural Development and Environmental Economics in China. 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1497433335706255.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Lai, Wangyang. "Three Essays on Agricultural Development and Environmental Economics in China." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1497433335706255

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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